The notes I leave for myself

by david

Between paper, Evernote, Simplenote, emails I send myself, iPhone notepad scribbles, and the occasional voice recording, I leave myself a ton of fragmentary evidence of unfinished brain activity. Every now and again, I dig into the scribbles looking for something. I rarely find what I’m looking for. Today, I found this:

If it’s not clear to you what this is, it’s a note I made to myself, in Evernote, on January 20. It’s labeled “meaning of life” and it has no contents. There’s no way I can improve upon it.

It’s probably the only complete work in any of my notebooks.

I’m constantly haunted by the idea that I already thought of a brilliant joke, and that I wrote it down but can’t find it. And then I dive into my notes, and I come up with cryptic stuff like “children walking invisible dog. Throwing trash into hoop.” Instead of decoding it, I should lick the paper, just to be sure.